Let me ask you a question. Did you ever have a job where you got along with everyone, except for there was that one person who always gave you a problem, and for whatever reason they knew they could get away with it. So they just kept giving you shit, day after day, DRIP! DRIP! DRIP! like Chinese water torture until you couldn’t take it anymore and quit or got yourself fired?

Well, this story is about when I worked as a doorman in this luxury apartment building in mid-town Manhattan called the Marbough House. But it’s not what happened to me, this is a story about what happened to this stubborn-old Puerto Rican man I used to work with named Jose, who was a real character, a great inspiration, and in his own way a hero because he taught me a very valuable life lesson about the POWER OF STUBBORNNESS and standing up to people. This story is called: DOORMAN or Why Mike Tyson Said “He’s the Dick-head Who Wouldn’t Get My Girls a Cab!”

Now historically, the luxury apartment business in Manhattan has been run by old-school Hungarian and Puerto Rican immigrants. These are the little guys, you know, who are build like little sausages. They got little sausage hands with little sausage fingers. Everything they got: their arms, their legs, even their little tummies are built like little sausages. They’re little sausage men, and ‘cause they’re all so small, they’ve got that Napoleon complex thing going. You know? All day long all these little dinks are throwing temper tantrums, ROAR! stamping around like the pissed off little trolls that they are, with veins bulging out of their heads. But even in the most scarlet rage, you can tell these guys deep down are really thoroughly enjoying themselves. I must say I respected them, because they came over here on the boat, could barely speak English, with no formal education, but still had the tenacity to muscle their way into these high paying union jobs.

Now, when I started I got placed with this bitchin’ sixty-five year old Puerto Rican man named Jose to train me. Jose was awesome. He kept birdseed underneath the doorman’s podium, that’s at the front door where you have your buzzer and intercom, and he’d take these little breaks throughout the day to feed the pigeons. So picture this: Jose would be standing there halfway out the front door, throwing bird seed out the front of this sixty-million dollar luxury apartment building, and he’d turn to me with that Brillo hair sticking out of his head lookin’ like some kind of Puerto Rican Einstein and go, “You know Teddy, even though I’m a Puerto Rican, I could really get into being a hit man for the Mafia. Yea! I could kill a person, SNAP! like that! But I could never kill an animal. Because to me, in this world, if you bring up an animal and take care of it, that animal will never turn on you. But a person could turn on you in a second. That’s why sometimes animals are better than people...”

“...So Teddy listen up, in this job the most important lesson you learn is this: DON’T TAKE SHIT FROM ANYONE you can’t let these people push you around. Because as a doorman it is your job to make sure people use the proper door. This is very important. Let me explain to you how you open a door.” I’m like, “Oh man, this is gonna be good because I’ve never ever had anyone explain to me how to open a door before.”